RMC Paladins vs. Toronto Varsity Blues

Friday November 26th, 2010 at Athletic Centre Sports Gym, Toronto

RMC travelled to Toronto sporting a 2 - 4 record, Toronto at 2 - 7. However, the Varsity Blues' resume in the OUA, coupled with the extremely young RMC team and Toronto looked like the heavy favourite. Toronto, though the ugly record, did win the OUA championship just last year. They have been in the final four for a ridiculous amount of consecutive years (22, I believe). And they felt confident enough that their player leading in points, 8 Karlee Diesing, was nowhere to be found. Nor Amy Sweetman, third-year left-side.

In the first set, that didn't prove to be a problem. First-year Elyssa Lanoix benefited greatly in court time with her senior teammates off the floor. Maybe it was her opponents on RMC, twins 12 Mallory and 15 Chelsey Litjens, who played alongside Lanoix just last year for their high school team Gisele Lalonde, but Lanoix came out firing. The rookie player put down six kills in the first set to lead all players. The score was never close, with Toronto taking it 25-13 to go up one set to none.

The second set wasn't the dramatic comeback that the Paladins needed. Toronto, with their own similar-looking sisters 2 Katrina and 11 Shannon Rossall, put up a block that RMC never could consistently push through. That isn't to say they didn't try. Both of their outside attacks, 1 Danielle Vortisch and 3 Ariel Brown-Berkeley, can hammer the ball. And both of them are in their first year of eligibility, along with their 6'2" Litjens twins from Ottawa. But their pure talent alone wasn't enough, and RMC lost the set to Toronto without getting to double digits 25-9.

The third set followed the same routine. Lanoix played like a woman possessed, finishing with a match high 11 kills. 6 Alexandra Hudson played opposite her in rotation at power and consistently put down kills herself, finishing with 8. Even without their entire regular line-up, Toronto finished RMC in straight sets, winning the third 25-14.

Toronto improves to 3-7, passing RMC in the standings at 2-5. That finishes the 2010 part of the season for these two teams. We'll see them again in January for the last part of their season.